README-alpha

This is GNU tar.

This is a *pre-release* version, and not ready for production use yet.
Please send comments and problem reports to <bug-tar@gnu.org>.

If you have taken the sources from CVS you will need the following
packages (or later) to build GNU tar.  We don't make any extra effort
to accommodate older versions of these packages, so please make sure
that you have the latest stable version.

- Automake <http://www.gnu.org/software/automake/>
- Autoconf <http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/>
- Bison <http://www.gnu.org/software/bison/>
- Gettext <http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/>
- Gzip <http://www.gnu.org/software/gzip/>
- M4 <http://www.gnu.org/software/m4/>
- Texinfo <http://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo>
- Wget <http://www.gnu.org/software/wget/>

As of this writing, the latest stable version of Gzip is 1.2.4 but we
suggest using test version 1.3.5 (or later, if one becomes available).

Valgrind <http://valgrind.org/> is also highly recommended, if
Valgrind supports your architecture.

Before building the package, run "bootstrap".  It will obtain gnulib
and paxutils files from their Git repositories on Savannah.  Then, it will
fetch the po files from tar page at Translation Project, and, finally, it
will start autoconfiguration process.  Simply running bootstrap without
arguments should do in most cases.

Bootstrap reads its configuration from file bootstrap.conf located on the
top of tar source tree.  Several options are provided that modify its
behavior.  Run 'bootstrap --help' for a list.



Copyright 2001-2021 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

This file is part of GNU tar.

GNU tar is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

GNU tar is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.